Category: Comics & Manga

How I’m going to publish the project and a sneak peek at the first episode.

I’ve been steadily working away at my next project, Lunar Space Colony. It’s a slice-of-life sci-fi story about a woman named Bri who leaves Earth to work on the colony. It’s a longer story that I’m going to serialize weekly online. My plan is to launch the first few episodes on July 3rd and then release a new episode every Tuesday after.

I’ve been wanting to do a 24-Hour Comic Challenge for a bit now, and I’ve got the date all set. I’m going to try to make 24 pages of comics over 24 hours on June 22 and June 23.

It should be a great way to push myself to work faster and hopefully learn a lot.

I’m not doing it on the international day in October because I want to take on the challenge sooner, and I’m also not going to go for 24 consecutive hours. I’m planning on taking 8 hours to sleep. I’m not into staying up all night, and skipping a night of sleep will really throw off my life balance.

My employer, Big Cartel, has an Arts & Service Hours program where we can use some time to work on personal projects, volunteer, or learn new skills. I’m using some of my hours to take on this challenge.

I’ve got a little over a month to prepare. I’m feeling a little nervous, but also really excited.

I enjoy listening to podcasts, so I’m starting a new feature called Podcast Spotlight where I’ll be sharing my favorite podcasts.

Process Party is a podcast hosted by two comic creators, Zach Soto and Mike Dawson, about making comics. Each episode typically starts with Zach and Mike talking about what they’ve been working on (the jibba-jabba segment) and then they interview a comic creator. There have been over 70 episodes as of writing this, with new episodes releasing weekly.

After a bit of a break between projects to focus on developing my skills, I’ve started Lunar Space Colony in earnest. I decided that I’m going to publish the project online in weekly episodes as vertical comics instead of print sized pages. Printing my last project was a good learning experience, but I want to instead focus on accessibility and publishing regular chunks of the comic.

Also, with this change, I started drawing digitally. When I started making comics last September, I set out to focus on using traditional tools because it seemed like a nice way to take a break from the computer. After taking some time to think about it, the power and ergonomic implications of digital started to really appeal to me. I don’t have space for a drafting table or a setup that would serve me best for traditional art. But I do have enough space for a tablet. I’m going to write more about this switch soon.

After taking some time to get used to drawing digitally, I began Lunar Space Colony by designing the characters.

In the months since finishing reading Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, I’ve been making my way through Scott McCloud’s trilogy of books on comics. I started with Understanding Comics, which is the first and probably most popular in the trilogy.

Two weeks ago I published my first multi-page comic, Terminal. It took me three months to make it, and I’m proud of what I’ve made. I’ve been reflecting upon the project since finishing it, so I thought I’d share my process and what I learned.